Argyropulos’ first trip to Italy was in connection with the
Ferraro-Florentine Council (1438) is was an occasion for him to meet Francis
Philelphem and the Italian humanists. From 1441 to 144 he studied in Padua where he
earned a doctorate and the honorific title: “rector artistarum et
medicorum”; at the urging of Emperor Constantine XI he lectured at the
university in Constantinople (1448–1453), where he commented on
Aristotle’s Physics and Logic and as a supporter of unity
between the Greek and Latin Church he wrote a treatise on the Council of Florence
concerning the origin of the Holy Spirit (ed. R 1652; PG 158, 991–1008); after
the fall of Constantinople he traveled to Greece, Italy, and France. From 1457 to
1471 and from 1477 to 1481 with the support of Cosimo and Pietro Medici he taught
the Greek language and philosophy first in Florence and then (at the invitation of
Pope Sixtus IV, with whom he studied in Padua) in Rome. He was a renowned teacher
and a friend of Latin and Greek humanists (his students included Platina, Michael
Apostolios, Donato Acciaiuoli, Cristoforo Landino, and Angelo Poliziano). He was one
of the major promoters of the formation of this movement of philosophical thought in
the Florentine Renaissance, from which the mature thought of Marsilio Ficino grew.
He was the author of oratorical and philosophical works and wrote many letters. He
was especially known was a translator of Aristotle’s writings: Ethica
nicomachea, De anima, and Porphyry’s Isagoge. He also edited
other translations. The Physica, De caelo and De anima are
published in the third edition of Aristotle’s writings (Academia Regia
Borussica, Berolini). Argyropulos was interest mainly as a philologist and historian
in Arisotle, but as a philosopher he was closer to Platonism. He tried to reconcile
Plato’s theories was the Stagyrite’s views, and this position appeared
in his many polemical writings with Poliziano, Theodore Gaza, and George of
Trapezunto, and particular in his collaboration with Cardinal Bessarion in the
publication of In calumniatorem Platonis and in the introduction to the
commentary on the Isagoge where Argyropulos revived the Platonic theory of
the ideas and ascribed to ideas an existence separate from visible things.